Tuesday Morning Federal Newscast – January 11th

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air.

• Employees still working under the Defense Department’s National Security Personnel System will receive 2.26 percent pay raises this month. FederalTimes reports, some of the 54,000 affected employees are also eligible for performance bonuses. The money will come from what would have been in-grade step increases, had the employees been moved to the General Schedule personnel system. So far, 172 thousand workers have been moved from NSPS. That system will be phased out this year. People earning more than $155,000 a year are ineligible for a performance bonus.
• After a stormy tenure, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction is stepping down. Retired Marine Corps general Arnold Fields faced criticism from Capitol Hill and from fellow IGs since being named in 2008. Fields said he’ll leave in another month, to give the White House time to find a successor. The agency tracks $70 billion in yearly spending aimed at rebuilding Afghanistan. It employs a staff of 120 criminal investigators and auditors.
• President Obama will nominate Heather Higginbottom to be the OMB deputy director for budget. OMB says Higginbottom would come to the job from the White House Domestic Policy Council, where she’s the deputy director. She would replace Rob Nabors, who has moved on to be the senior advisor to interim White House Chief of Staff Pete Rouse.
• The White House loses one of its point people for open government. Beth Novek has left her post to return to her job at New York Law School. Novek was the federal deputy chief technology officer for open government. That position is in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. No word on who will replace her.
• The first steps in the first phase of a huge project for DARPA are underway. Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, a commercial real estate financing company, has secured a $100 million loan for the Arlington headquarters of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. The Washington Business Journal reports the 355,000 square foot building at Founders Square will be the first in Arlington to meet the Department of Defense’s new minimum anti-terrorism standards for buildings. It will include an 82-foot secured perimeter and controlled parking. The project will sit near the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation to form the highest concentration of scientific research agencies in the D.C. metropolitan area. The agency will pay nearly fifteen million dollars a year for the space.
• The Coast Guard should get the ships and funding it needs to respond better to oil spills. That recommendation will come out today from the presidential panel examining last year’s Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. The commission will also recommend that Congress raise the cap, now at $75 million, on oil companies’ liability for offshore spills. A third recommendation will call for the petroleum industry to establish a safety institute to audit companies practices.

More news links

Private guards at National Archives not trained for emergencies, watchdog says (WashingtonPost)

Federal union wins case for SSA teleservice employees

Report finds IRS does business with tax delinquents (GovExec)

Former NASA Employee Charged with Illegally Exporting Military Technology to South Korea (DOJ press release)

Funeral pickets to be met by ‘angels’ (CNN)

THIS AFTERNOON ON FEDERAL NEWS RADIO

Coming up today on The DorobekInsider:

** The Thrift Savings Plan is undergoing a big changes to the L-funds. These are the funds where you determine when you’re going to tap the money, and you set it and forget it. The L-2010 fund is gone. It is replaced by the new L-2050 fund. We’ll find out what that means for you.

** And the FCC has jumped into competitions. We’ll find out what they’re doing

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